Does anyone else think the CAO should publish course choice statistics?

hatrickpatrick

I was just thinking, every year the actual purpose of education gets lost because getting into college is dependant on this "points": system, and no one really has any idea how many points they need so we're basically flying blind through the whole thing...

Would it not make more sense for the CAO to publish how many people have signed up for a course? Like, once the deadline has passed, in February, you could click on a course on their website and see a new line, "Number of places - 50, number of applicants for 2008 - 65"

That way you'd know if there is going to be a high level of competition for a course and thus a high points cutoff... Why don't they do this? It'd take a massive load of stress off everyone, even if the course turned out to be high in demand, at least you'd know that it was worth working your ass off to get points...

Brooke01

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

I was just thinking, every year the actual purpose of education gets lost because getting into college is dependant on this "points": system, and no one really has any idea how many points they need so we're basically flying blind through the whole thing...

Would it not make more sense for the CAO to publish how many people have signed up for a course? Like, once the deadline has passed, in February, you could click on a course on their website and see a new line, "Number of places - 50, number of applicants for 2008 - 65"

That way you'd know if there is going to be a high level of competition for a course and thus a high points cutoff... Why don't they do this? It'd take a massive load of stress off everyone, even if the course turned out to be high in demand, at least you'd know that it was worth working your ass off to get points...

Excellent thinking

ZorbaTehZ

The statistics would be constantly changing ie, you can change your choices until the end of June. That's not much use imo. Plus, it could potentially make students lax about how much work they ought do, which is a big no-no tbh.

claire h

Perhaps, but then imagine what it'd do to the points if there was an unexpectedly low demand for some courses some years, and everyone decided to apply for them...

There's no way of avoiding the stress, really.

ETA: anyway, it's only for new courses where you're really flying blind; the points for previous years do give you some idea even if there are no guarantees.

Xhristy

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hatrickpatrick

You're missing my point: I wasn't suggesting we base our course choices on points at all. What I was suggesting is that we get the statistics for how many people have signed up for our first preference choice vs the number of availible places - thus informing us of how hard we'll have to work in order to get into the course we want to get into. How is that a bad idea? It would just eliminate the stress of plunging into the unknown. With the current system, you could get any number of points and not get the points you need.
Tw of my friends sat the leaving cert last year, and got the 2006 points requirement. Thrilled at having got into their course - only to discover that twice as many people had signed up for the course as in the previous year, and therefore they didn;t have enough to get in. Had they known beforehand that the demand had gone up, they would have known they needed to get more points.

I agree it would be a logistical nightmare, but the CAO must be one already - surely this wouldn't make it any worse?

Overheal

your missing the point of the system: that you pick what you want, because you want to do it. So you are interested in your course. so you stick with it. get a degree. get a job. become an economic investment.

If you start dictating your choices on outside factors (speculation on points, number of places, etc) then you will probably settle for a course you dont really want all that bad and will eventually drop out of. It happens all the god damn time as it is. Thats a waste of your time, your money, and the governments time and money. Because dont forget the gross number of fees reductions you are entitled to your first run through college. The govt fits the bill for the vast majority of your education. They want to see the most made of it. The CAO helps that happen.

Fine for the elite few, who would interpret the data correctly and say 'oh damn, Im going to have to work real hard if i want that course' but thats just it - they are the elite minority. You're students. 17, 18, and 19 years old. I'm only 20 ill grant you. Dont assume we know better.

For me, it was the not knowing that got me to work harder in school: if I couldnt be certain of how much i needed to get in, i was going to make damned sure i got as much as i could. But if you look at the data and say 'oh yeah itll be piss to get into that', slack off, and miss the points requirement, well ha ha buddy. That kind of thinking got me into 6th year.

Take my best advice: automatically assume the course youve chosen is popular as hell, and that 3 times as many applicants are applying to it as there are places, and that all of them are nerds. Hence, you have nothing to lose by making that your 1st choice, and giving it your all in the LC.

JC 2K3

Spending hours reading articles about CAO points, researching trends in CAO points for different courses, debating with yourself over what points the course will be this year etc. is such a waste of time that could be spent studying the stuff that actually matters and all this fretting about CAO points causes more worry than it's worth.

Put down the courses you wanna do your order of preference and work your ass off regardless. End of story. Stop thinking about the points needed for your course and focus on getting the best results you're capable of.

Xhristy

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bUILDERtHEbOB

Bit off topic but can you still change your course choices or do you have to wait til June to change them again?

hatrickpatrick

The inevitable end result from what you are suggesting would be people basing their choice on the numbers and not on preference.

Would they, though? I was more thinking of using it to figure out how much I need to do in order to get my first preference, not to actually make my descision based on how hard it will be to get in...

You could just do your best. Problem solved.

Plus statistics will lie. You won't know before hand what the points will be so you should just try your best.

JC 2K3

Indeed.

In any case, for example, if your course was 400 points and you got 410, but knew that you could have gotten 500, would you not be disappointed? I mean you got your course, but you didn't do the best you could, and you'd be limiting your options if you happened to want to change courses.

Xhristy

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Charlie 22

Hold on a minute what about the people who have both level 7 and level 8 courses down on the form?

JC 2K3

What about them?

Charlie 22

Then those people will be down twice on the statistics as they will be offered both courses when the results come out providing they meet the points cut off for both. I know lots of people in this boat me included.

JC 2K3

This has nothing to do with offers...

You could be down up to 10 times in the level 8 stats....

Chunky Monkey

I wish it was like the way it is in the UK where you send in a personal statement, predicted grades and a reference and then you may get interviewed (though many courses don't require this) and then you are given a conditional offer before or shortly after Christmas and whether you get your place or not is entirely based on what your results are in August rather than it depending on what your results are and how many people applied...in August...if that makes sense.

Mano_Cornuta

The CAO obviously isn't going to change the whole points system. The stats that I'd like to see published are the average points achieved by last year's applicants. I want to study journalism in DCU and I was onthe CAO website in school the last day, juts dossing around, when I noticed that beside the 455 minimun requirement for the course, there was another figure posted, 480. I was told to ignore it by the teacher, I was told that it didn't matter, but it turns out that it was the average points achieved by the 50 students that got onto the course last year. I'd consider that to be fairly important!

Xhristy

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europerson

Mano_Cornuta wrote: »

I was onthe CAO website in school the last day, juts dossing around, when I noticed that beside the 455 minimun requirement for the course, there was another figure posted, 480. I was told to ignore it by the teacher, I was told that it didn't matter, but it turns out that it was the average points achieved by the 50 students that got onto the course last year. I'd consider that to be fairly important!

Just to point out that it's the median level of points, not the arithmetic average.

carrig2007

I propose a website that shows a list of all courses and the required points for each course for every year going back 6/7 years. It would give students a rough idea on how much they need anyway.

That said if any1 knows where this is available it would be greatly appreciated

Chunky Monkey

carrig2007 wrote: »

I propose a website that shows a list of all courses and the required points for each course for every year going back 6/7 years. It would give students a rough idea on how much they need anyway.

That said if any1 knows where this is available it would be greatly appreciated

Yeah go on to the CAO website, I think it goes back to 1999 this year (points requirement). I checked medicine last year, in 1998 the points requirement for RCSI was 545, lucky biatches :mad:

EDIT: It does go back to 1998 this year, and medicine was actually 535 there and 540 in UCD, ugh!

Anyway, here's the page: http://www.cao.ie/index.php?page=points

JC 2K3

Many exams, particularly maths, applied maths, physics and chemistry(and probably others I have no experience with), were also much harder back then...

JSK 252

JC 2K3 wrote: »

Many exams, particularly maths, applied maths, physics and chemistry(and probably others I have no experience with), were also much harder back then...

I disagree.

JC 2K3

Ah come on now. Maths and App Maths especially. Compare the papers from the last few years to the pre-2000 ones. I mean, is the difference in difficulty not obvious?

The syllabi for both Physics and Chemistry were changed in 2002 IIRC, and from what I can see, more difficult stuff was taken out. Now unlike App Maths and Maths, I didn't do any pre 2002 papers due to the syllabus changes, but I looked at a few of them and what was being asked was a considerably higher standard.

Xhristy

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eZe^

I had a connection last year who gave me the confidential statistics for my course. It was down 10%, 27 applicants for 27 students. I was delighted!

Chunky Monkey

JC 2K3 wrote: »

Many exams, particularly maths, applied maths, physics and chemistry(and probably others I have no experience with), were also much harder back then...

Yep, looking through past papers it is pretty obvious that they were a lot harder. Still I think I would prefer harder and less points requirement cos it would leave more room for working hard at subjects you enjoy and getting a D3 in a subject you don't like.

eoinalmighty

You can check course choice statistics, but only for broad subject ranges e.g. arts, science, medicine, etc.

go to http://www2.cao.ie/dir_report/pdf/AppStats01Feb2008.pdf

eoinalmighty

JC 2K3 wrote: »

Many exams, particularly maths, applied maths, physics and chemistry(and probably others I have no experience with), were also much harder back then...

I find it very hard to believe that the chemistry paper was harder! Its still touch and go because Ted, the examiner likes to just change the marking scheme whenever he feels like it! Like something that was soluble in water for years of examining now becomes slightly soluble! H2S i think

teckoda

Excellent question actually. And very debatable. I certainly thing that publishing these statistics would be beneficial. Especially to those students who are all going for the same course that has limited number of places available.

Some changes should be made in the system i believe.

JC 2K3

All it would result in would be less ambitious students being discouraged from applying for what they really want to do.